12 ProstitutionAndSexualAutonomy Anderson

Anderson, Scott A. (2002).
"Prostitution and Sexual Autonomy:

Making Sense of the Prohibition of Prostitution". ETHICS, 112,
748-780.

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Prostitution and Sexual Autonomy:

Making Sense of the Prohibition of
Prostitution*
Scott A. Anderson
INTRODUCTION
By now, it is well known that prostitutes in Western nations frequently
live and operate in truly disastrous conditions. These conditions are
typically worst for the many economically and/or racially marginalized
women who earn their livelihoods through prostitution, but many other
female as well as male prostitutes suffer gravely. Prostitution is also commonly thought to harm the public health and quality of life of many
others not directly active in it. The extent of these problems varies across
countries, in part due to differences in the regulations and social programs that govern and buffer prostitution in the developed West. Nonetheless, prostitution presents significant social problems in virtually every
Western country and society, testifying to the seeming intractability of
these difficulties.1
The United States is one of the few Western nations in which all
* For helpful feedback, I thank Leslie Francis, Mark Jenkins, Jessica Spector, and an
anonymous referee. I would also like to thank audiences at the Society for Philosophy
and Public Affairs, Iowa State University, and the Contemporary Philosophy and Political
Theory Workshops at the University of Chicago. Special thanks go to Marcia Baron for
many thoughtful suggestions, and deep gratitude for help and support goes to Martha
Nussbaum, Candace Vogler, and Sarah Rose.
1. In this article, the term prostitution refers to a kind of occasional, limited transaction in which a person purchases live physical sexual recreation from someone who
provides it in order to receive tangible, nonsexual benefits as compensation, either directly
from the purchaser or through an intermediate party (e.g., a pimp or procurer). Because
prostitution necessarily involves at least two parties, and often a third, when this article
discusses prostitution, it should be understood to include the combined activities of all
of these parties and not just those of the prostitute.
Ethics 112 ( July 2002): 748780
! 2002 by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved. 0014-1704/2002/112040001$10.00.
748

Anderson
Prostitution and Sexual Autonomy
749
forms of prostitution are illegal almost everywhere. Nonetheless, despite its prohibition, prostitution continues to occur widely; in fact,
one might now reasonably question whether these laws have a purpose
beyond simply controlling some aspects of the practicemainly those
that offend middle-class sensibilitieswhile underwriting a moralistic
disdain for those who engage in it. Adding injury to insult, the prohibition of prostitution is widely believed to exacerbate its harms, especially in the United States. It contributes significantly to the hardships of prostitutes because it places them outside of legal protection,
making them extremely vulnerable to predators who would exploit
their relative powerlessness.
In the wake of these facts, liberals and radical feminists have been
locked in debate about how best to respond to the problems associated
with prostitution. On the liberal side, a number of authors have recently
argued that we should adopt a reform program with respect to prostitution, one that would alter not just the practice and the laws that
regulate it but also our attitudes toward it.3 The authors in this group
urge that we normalize prostitution, that is, treat it as just another
recreation-oriented service industry. Opposing them, a number of authors often identified (by themselves and others) as radical feminists
have attacked prostitution and the arguments in favor of its normalization.4 In particular, they have spotlighted the severity of the problems
2
2. In contrast to most of Western Europe, prostitution is currently illegal everywhere

in the United States, except for rural counties in Nevada, where it is in some places legal,
though strongly regulated. The illegality of prostitution in the United States typically
includes prohibitions on the sale of sexual services, the purchase of sexual services, pimping
or otherwise employing others to provide sexual services, operating a business where this
is known to occur, and recruiting others into the business.
3. For representations of the liberal position, I will cite Martha Nussbaum, Whether
From Reason or Prejudice: Taking Money for Bodily Services, in her Sex and Social Justice
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), pp. 27698; Sibyl Schwarzenbach, Contractarians and Feminists Debate Prostitution, New York University Review of Law and Social
Change 18 (199091): 10330; and Lars Ericsson, Charges against Prostitution: An Attempt
at a Philosophical Assessment, Ethics 90 (1980): 33566. Others whom I would line up
on this side of the debate include D. A. J. Richards, Kenneth Shuster, and Laurie Shrage,
though her position is considerably more ambivalent than that of the others. A considerable number of prostitutes and other sex workers also have argued strongly for normalization. See, e.g., Norma Jean Almodovar, For Their Own Good: The Results of the
Prostitution Laws as Enforced by Cops, Politicians and Judges, Hastings Womens Law
Journal 10 (1999): 10115; Carol Queen, Sex Radical Politics, Sex-Positive Feminist
Thought, and Whore Stigma, in Whores and Other Feminists, ed. Jill Nagle (New York:
Routledge, 1997), pp. 12535; and generally the discussions in Gail Pheterson, ed., A
Vindication of the Rights of Whores (Seattle: Seal, 1989).
4. The position Im identifying as radical feminist is so named because of the
prominence among its defenders of authors such as Andrea Dworkin, Catharine MacKinnon, Kathleen Barry, Carole Pateman, Sheila Jeffreys, and Evelina Giobbe. While there
are, of course, variation in their views, the position I develop out of their writings is, I

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Ethics
July 2002
faced by women in prostitution and have tried to show that prostitution

is a retrograde institution which should not be condoned but eliminated
through means including (though not necessarily limited to) its legal
prohibition.5
The arguments on both sides of this dispute have force but leave
serious doubts. This article is motivated in part by the concern that the
radical feminists have failed to explain clearly why selling sexual recreation might itself be particularly problematicthat is, why open commerce in sex would make things worse for women than they are anyway
in a patriarchal, capitalist society. In light of liberal proposals to reform
prostitution, it is hard to see why, if such reforms were effective, we
might still reasonably object to the institution. But liberal arguments
for normalizing prostitution fail, I think, to make a compelling case, in
part because they fail to understand how deeply problematic sexual
relations are in our society and how normalization of prostitution would
tend to obscure and entrench these problems, not solve them. Thus,
while they raise what appears to be a significant challenge to the feminists arguments, this challenge can be rebutted by a careful reconstruction of the grounds of the feminists dissent.
This article attempts to give such a reconstruction by showing how
the prohibition of prostitution is of a piece with a wide range of social
regulations that serve to protect sexual autonomy. Although sexual autonomy may seem far from the minds of many radical feminists, properly
understood, sexual autonomy is crucial to the feminist goals of achieving
womens equality with men, as well as promoting a more general form
think, more or less consistent with and recognizable in the work of all these authors. For
representative and influential examples, see Andrea Dworkin, Prostitution and Male Supremacy, in her Life and Death (New York: Free Press, 1997), pp. 138216; Catharine
MacKinnon, Prostitution and Civil Rights, Michigan Journal of Gender and Law 1 (1993):
1331; Kathleen Barry, The Prostitution of Sexuality (New York: New York University Press,
1995); Carole Pateman, The Sexual Contract (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press,
1988); Sheila Jeffreys, The Idea of Prostitution (North Melbourne: Spinifex, 1997); Evelina
Giobbe, Prostitution: Buying the Right to Rape, in Rape and Sexual Assault III: A Research
Handbook, ed. Ann Wolbert Burgess (New York: Garland, 1991), pp. 14360. Some disciplinary philosophers also argue in this vein, including Debra Satz, Markets in Womens
Sexual Labor, Ethics 106 (1995): 6385; and Christine Overall, Whats Wrong with Prostitution? Evaluating Sex Work, Signs 17 (1992): 70524.
5. A note on the terms used in this debate: virtually all commentators on prostitution
favor some reform of the laws prohibiting prostitution. Some advocate what I will call the
normalization of prostitution, which involves at least making it legal and perhaps going
so far as to treat it as just another sort of commercial enterprise (though one to which
age restrictions apply). Among those favoring normalization, there are debates about the
best course toward normalization (e.g., legalization vs. decriminalization), but this article
will not be concerned with those issues. Normalization is opposed in this article to
prohibition, which will describe both the status quo as well as the reform position
advocated by radical feminists, who would retain and even strengthen penalties on customers and middlemen, though not, perhaps, on prostitutes themselves.

Anderson
751
of autonomy for women. By showing how, for us, sexual autonomy depends on a range of social restrictions on our individual practices, I will
set out what I take to be the strongest set of considerations in favor of
prohibiting prostitution. My arguments admittedly do not show that, all
things considered, the prohibition of prostitution is justified, since this
stronger result would require consideration of a large number of factors,
many of them empirical, which lie outside the scope of this articles
purview.6 But by showing the weaknesses of the reform strategy, this article
undercuts one of the main motivations for normalizing prostitution.
This article outlines the radical feminist critique of prostitution and
then describes how liberals have responded to this critique, in particular,
the suggestion that prostitution, including our attitudes toward it, can
and should be reformed. To make progress in resolving this dispute, I
first step back from a narrow focus on prostitution and examine the
broader role that certain social regulations of sexual behavior play in
protecting individual sexual autonomy throughout our society. These
regulations serve as a barrier between sexual activity and the activities
of production and commerce. After showing how sexual autonomy is
protected by these sorts of barriers, I return to the radical feminists
critique and argue that a prohibition on prostitution can be justified
because of the role it plays in defending the sexual autonomy of the
poorest, least-powerful members of our society. This is important for
those people most vulnerable to becoming prostitutes, but it is also
necessary in order to pursue justice between rich and poor, as well as
equality between women and men.
Before proceeding, it is important to be clear about what is not up
for discussion here. There are businesses that literally enslave people,
or subject them to violence, abuse, threats against loved ones, deceit,
gross psychological manipulation, and so forth, in order to lure or keep
them in the sex trade. Moreover, some sexual commerce involves children. These sorts of business practices cannot be defended, and no one
I wish to debate defends them. When these kinds of violence and gross
6. The difficulties here include the fact that what kinds of practices we legally and
socially condone may affect what kinds go on beyond the bounds of legal and social
legitimacy. It is not always clear, for instance, that prohibiting a practice is the most effective
way to quell its occurrence overall. Some evidence about the relationship of overt social
regulation to actual social practice can be gained by surveying across different societies
having different legal and social norms, and comparing cases. In nn. 38 and 40, I discuss
some such evidence from European countries that have regulatory regimes for prostitution
rather different from that of the United States. Yet such cases can be less than conclusive
due to the numerous and obvious differences that combine to make each country and
culture unique. Also of concern is the cost of enforcing any policy of prohibition. For
one study showing a surprisingly high cost for current prohibitions, see Julie Pearl, The
Highest Paying Customers: Americas Cities and the Costs of Prostitution Control, Hastings
Law Journal 38 (1987): 76990.

752
Ethics
July 2002
exploitation are excluded, there remains a segment of the sex trade in

which all participants appear to exercise at least some continuing, minimal level of choice to engage in this practice. It is the propriety of
sexual commerce under these circumstances (or better) about which
there appears to be room to disagree and which serves as my topic.7
AN ANALYSIS OF THE RADICAL FEMINIST CRITIQUE OF
PROSTITUTION
The radical feminists criticism of prostitution flows from their more
general analysis of social relations. In the broader picture, they have
sought to publicize the extent to which women are disadvantaged in
contemporary Western societies, connecting these disadvantages to our
sexual practices. These practices, they argue, define a hierarchy in society, thus legitimating and enforcing the subordination of women as a
class. Of the sexual practices thought to have this effect, feminists frequently cite prostitution as both an indicator and cause of the subordinate state of women, even as the epitome of that subordination. Christine Overall, for instance, claims that given the interweaving of sex,
money and power, dominance and submission, oppression and victimization are necessarily built into the practice [of prostitution].8 Although this view is hardly self-evident, if Overall and others are correct
in it, then we would have the beginning of a rationale for attempting
to suppress prostitution on the grounds that it is an objectionable institution. As such, one could not accurately evaluate the choices of prostitutes or their clients by focusing narrowly on the harms or benefits
that result from such choices directly. Rather, such choices may be problematic for the contribution they make to sustaining a bad institutionin this case, one that frequently harms women and reinforces
their subordination to men.
In showing prostitution to be a bad institution, feminist arguments
generally offer a combination of the following three kinds of claims:
(1) that the good purchased from a prostitute is frequently, in part, her
own degradation; (2) that the existence of prostitution depends on the
existence of an inequality in social or economic power between prostitutes and their customers; and (3) that prostitution contributes to the
perpetuation of the inequalities that underlie the practice.
The first claim, that prostitution involves the sale of an individuals
degradation, is given a powerful voice by Andrea Dworkin, herself a
7. Please note also that the relevance of the arguments presented here may well be
limited to the societies located in the developed West. In other parts of the world, the
facts that would be most relevant for thinking about prostitution may be very different in
both kind and substance.
8. Overall, p. 722.

Anderson
753
survivor of prostitution. She paints a harrowing picture of prostitution

as a kind of inhumane violence targeted at the female body:
I think that prostitutes experience a specific inferiority. Women
in general are considered to be dirty. Most of us experience this
as a metaphor . . . but a prostitute lives the reality of being the
dirty woman. . . .
She is perceived as, treated as . . . vaginal slime. She is dirty;
a lot of men have been there. A lot of semen, a lot of vaginal
lubricant. . . . Her anus is often torn from the anal intercourse,
it bleeds. Her mouth is a receptacle for semen, that is how she is
perceived and treated. All women are considered dirty because of
menstrual blood but she bleeds other times, other places. She
bleeds because shes been hurt, she bleeds and shes got bruises
on her.
When men use women in prostitution, they are expressing a
pure hatred for the female body. It is as pure as anything on this
earth ever is or ever has been. It is a contempt so deep, so deep,
that a whole human life is reduced to a few sexual orifices, and
he can do anything he wants.9
I want you to feel the delicate tissues in her body that are being
misused. I want you to feel what it feels like when it happens over
and over and over and over and over and over and over again:
because thats what prostitution is. The repetition will kill you,
even if the man doesnt.10
Although many people, including many prostitutes, deny that prostitution is always this brutal or degrading, one of the successes of feminist
scholarship has been to uncover the extent of the suffering and brutalization endured by many prostitutes. These harms are far worse than
attend almost any ordinary job and are arguably of a piece with rape,
domestic battery, and sexual harassment.11 Dworkin graphically describes the damaged body, the viscera, and the repetitive nature of prostitution in order to prevent her reader from achieving a detachment
from these lived experiences or a retreat to a more abstract approach
to them. The point, she claims, is that the subordination and degradation reflected in these harms are part of what men purchase in pros-
9. Dworkin, pp. 14445.

10. Ibid., p. 140.
11. Ibid., p. 141. In this same vein, see Giobbe, Prostitution; and Beverly Balos and
Mary Louise Fellows, A Matter of Prostitution: Becoming Respectable, New York University
Law Review 74 (1999): 12201303.

754
Ethics
July 2002
titution; hence, these harms are not incidental to nor easily separable
from the practice of prostitution.12
A second contention holds that in prostitution, men of relative
privilege and power exploit the poverty, powerlessness, and history of
sexual abuse that characterize the lives of many women. Radical feminists argue that the very existence of a supply of willing prostitutes should
be seen as a mark of entrenched injustice. Since no rational person
would willingly be consumed as a sexual object, prostitution is necessarily
a form of exploitation: its existence depends on the role social inequality
plays in ensuring that the socially more powerful have access to sexual
objects of their choice.13 While the conditions that lead people into
prostitution are not unique to women, these conditions appear to occur
in a pattern that is particularly gendered, to the disadvantage of women.
Women are typically poorer than men and thus more vulnerable to
economic exploitation and bad bargains in employment. In prostitution,
pimps or procurers capitalize on their economic and social vulnerability,
12. Feminists, radical or otherwise, have succeeded in amassing a great deal of evidence and testimony on the dire conditions in which many prostitutes live their
livesbefore, during, and (if they survive) after their time in prostitution. These conditions
include the following nonexhaustive list. Before: sexual abuse (as children or adults), child
abuse or neglect, domestic violence, drug and alcohol abuse, poverty, divorce, and racism.
During: rape, assault, murder, stigma, pregnancy, sexually transmitted diseases, discriminatory legal practices, drug and alcohol abuse, pimp control/slavery, poverty, psychosocial
harms (distancing, dissociation, inability to form intimate relationships), and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). After: stigma, psychosocial harms (distancing, dissociation,
inability to form intimate relationships), PTSD, and poor employment prospects. For some
works that document and/or catalog the harms suffered by prostitutes before, during,
and after prostitution, see the following sources: Vednita Carter and Evelina Giobbe, Duet:
Prostitution, Racism and Feminist Discourse, Hastings Womens Law Journal 10 (1999):
3757; Melissa Farley, Prostitution in Five Countries: Violence and Post-Traumatic Stress
Disorder, Feminism and Psychology 8 (1998): 40526; Ine Vanwesenbeeck, Prostitutes WellBeing and Risk (Amsterdam: Vrije Universiteit Press, 1994); Susan Kay Hunter, Prostitution
Is Cruelty and Abuse to Women and Children, Michigan Journal of Gender and Law 1
(1993): 91104; Margaret Baldwin, Split at the Root: Prostitution and Feminist Discourses
of Law Reform, Yale Journal of Law and Feminism 5 (1992): 47120; Evelina Giobbe, Confronting the Liberal Lies about Prostitution, in The Sexual Liberals and the Attack on Feminism,
ed. Dorchen Leidholdt and Janice G. Raymond (New York: Pergamon, 1990), 6781; and
Barry. Many of the harms described here seem to correspond to prostitution practiced at
a lower socioeconomic stratum within the domain of prostitution. For an account by a
prostitute who has escaped many of these attending difficulties while earning a good living
in prostitution, see the essay by Barbara [pseud.], Its a Pleasure Doing Business with
You, Social Text 37 (1993): 1122.
13. See, e.g., Susanne Kappeler, Liberals, Libertarianism, and the Liberal Arts Establishment, in Leidholdt and Raymond, eds., p. 180. To see the injustice in this, it helps
to see the space of possibilities as Dworkin does when she writes, Any man who has
enough money to spend degrading a womans life in prostitution has too much money.
He doesnt need what hes got in his pocket. But there is a woman who does (Dworkin,
p. 150).

Anderson
755
while law enforcement agencies treat them as outlawsliterally, people

for whom the laws protections do not apply. Many prostitutes have also
been abused as children, and these victims of abuse often become involved in prostitution at early ages, find it difficult to quit, and frequently
lack the ability to defend their interests against other opportunistic
abusers.14 Thus, women who become prostitutes are often subject to
mens worst treatment because those men know that prostitutes often
lack the wherewithal to oppose it.
The third plank of the institutional criticism of prostitution holds
that prostitution plays a key role in sustaining the social inequality of
women. It does so by defining women in general as sexual objects,
available to any man who desires them. One of the most obvious facts
about prostitution in our society, yet perhaps the hardest to take into
account, is the degree to which prostitution and prostitutes attract our
interest and serve as a stimulus for talk, jokes, stories, gazesin short,
as a source of our common titillation. But the stereotypes that are conjured by our common consciousness provide images not just of prostitutes but of women more generally.15 Political theorist Carole Pateman
connects this demonstrative effect of prostitution to the history of
womens oppression: When womens bodies are on sale as commodities
in the capitalist market, the terms of the original [sexual] contract
cannot be forgotten; the law of male sex-right is publicly affirmed, and
men gain public acknowledgment as womens sexual mastersthat is
whats wrong with prostitution.16 Prostitution thus supports a pernicious
stereotype of what women are for and reinforces our societys tendency
to view women first and foremost in sexual terms.
Although this description of the radical feminists position is brief
and lacks much of the detail and evidence in its favor, I think it describes
accurately the kind of argument that they take to weigh against prostitution. These claims, if true, would together seem to give us good
reason to treat prostitution as a suspect institution. Such a judgment
should prompt us to examine critically the broader social structures that
support the institution and the webs of choice and consequence it
creates.
14. For one recitation of the exploitative background of prostitution, see the chapter
on prostitution in Rosemarie Tongs Women, Sex, and the Law (Totowa, N.J.: Rowman &
Allanheld, 1984), esp. pp. 5153, 5961. For another, see Priscilla Alexander, Prostitution:
A Difficult Issue for Feminists, in Sex Work, ed. Frederique Delacoste and Priscilla Alexander (Pittsburgh: Cleis, 1987), pp. 184214.
15. See Satz, pp. 7781. For a similar though less well developed argument, see Overall,
pp. 71721.
16. Pateman, p. 208.

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Ethics
July 2002
THE LIBERAL RESPONSE: REFORM THROUGH

NORMALIZATION
Liberals can easily agree with radical feminists about many of the issues
involved in prostitution, including the extent to which prostitutes currently suffer, the significance of womens social and economic inferiority,
and the need to improve conditions for women generally. While they
also agree that the United States should revamp the laws regulating
prostitution, liberals disagree most directly with radical feminists over
the question of how prostitution should be regulated under the lessthan-ideal circumstances that typically confront women. Radical feminists generally favor maintaining and strengthening the prohibition of
prostitution; although almost all favor exempting the activities of prostitutes from legal penalties, they advocate prohibiting the activities of
the middlemen and customers. By contrast, while allowing for regulations with the health and safety of prostitutes and the public in mind,
liberals do not in general aim to eliminate commercial sexual recreation
as a way of making a living or as a pastime for those who can afford it.
They hold that even successful abolition may be only a very incomplete
solution to the problems inherent in prostitution. In response to feminist arguments for prohibition, they can grant that prostitution as now
practiced is a degrading institution, but they offer several rejoinders
that seem to undercut calls for its prohibition. I will briefly mention
two in passing and give a more extended discussion of a third.
The first rejoinder is that, even at the lowest rungs of voluntary
prostitution, women still gain some benefits from it, and it may well be
the best overall employment option they have. Eliminating prostitution
might make things worse for the poorest women by denying them the
benefits, small or large, that they gain from it. This objection may be
sound, and if so, it may be decisive. If redress for womens economic
conditions is not politically or otherwise feasible, we are pressed to
consider what would provide the second-best, still-feasible option. The
answer would depend on empirical and political facts about what would
happen to those who are or might become employed in prostitution
that lie beyond the scope of this article. I therefore take no stand on
this objection.17
The second rejoinder notes that there is a great diversity of activity
and participation within the bounds of prostitution. Even if we look just
at those who become prostitutes (ignoring their customers and pimps/
managers), we will find a great deal of heterogeneity among them (their
genders, economic conditions, education, races, sexual histories, etc.)
17. Almodovar, former prostitute and former head of COYOTE (Call Off Your Old
Tired Ethics), makes this objection forcefully (see Almodovar).

Anderson
757
as well as significant heterogeneity in their business and sexual activities.18 Therefore, it is not at all clear that prostitution amounts to a
single institution; it may divide up into several institutions, which may
or may not have any problematic characteristics in common. The questions raised by this challenge are difficult and interesting, but I will not
attempt to answer them directly; however, some of the arguments below
speak indirectly to the claim that (nearly) all forms of prostitution share
an important common element.19
There is a third rejoinder that is potentially more damaging yet
more amenable to a philosophical response. While the liberal respondents to radical feminism can and often do agree that prostitution is
the site of many serious harms that merit social redress, what they dispute
is that these harms derive specifically from the decisions of individuals
to engage in sexual commerce, either as buyers or providers. Unless it can
be made clear why selling sexual recreation to men contributes more to
maintaining womens oppression than other forms of heterosexual relations, it would appear unjustified to bar individuals from engaging in
voluntary sexual commerce. On the one hand, such a prohibition does
not clearly improve the background circumstances in which women live,
but it may well worsen the situation of those for whom prostitution is
the best of a bad lot of choices. On the other hand, if society were to
alleviate the harms that arise from womens economic and social inferiority, while also halting the problems created by prostitutions prohibition, we might well suppose that prostitution in such improved circumstances would be free from any remarkable harms. Thus, liberals
can agree with radical feminists that prostitution as it exists now is a
harmful, degraded institution, but they pointedly resist the conclusion
that prostitution (or sexual commerce in general) is necessarily a bad
institution.
This response seems to be at the heart of a number of liberal
critiques of the radical feminist position. Those liberals whose work
shows most concern with the lives of prostitutes argue that the best
realistic hope for prostitutes is to seek to reform the circumstances in
which prostitutes work. Although different writers have advocated different specific reforms, there is a general picture discernible in the work
of several of these authors. They call for both re-envisioning what it is
that prostitutes do as well as revising the typical attitudes of society at
large toward prostitution, and prostitutes in particular. So, for instance,
Sybil Schwarzenbach argues for legalization on the grounds that it is a
necessary step to help destroy prostitution as we know it and to aid its
18. Some of the range of this diversity is brought out in Julia OConnell Davidson,
Prostitution, Power and Freedom (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1998).
19. See esp. n. 49.

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Ethics
July 2002
metamorphosis into something she envisions as commercial erotic therapy. As a practitioner of such therapy, the prostitute could be respected
for her wealth of sexual and emotional knowledge.20 Lars Ericsson
argues that prostitutes might fulfill a socially valuable function by, inter
alia, decreasing the amount of sexual misery in society.21 In light of
considerations such as these, Martha Nussbaum argues in a recent essay
that the stigma accorded to prostitution is an unjust prejudice of the
same sort that once denigrated the activities of women actors, dancers,
and singers.22
The possibility that prostitution can be reformed calls into question
the basis of the institutional critique. If so-called casual sex by heterosexuals is not always, everywhere bad for women, then it is natural to
ask why an instance of casual sex should be suspect whenever the benefit
attained by one party (say, the woman) is remunerative rather than
sexual. What difference does, say, a lack of mutual sexual attraction
make to the ethical qualities of sexual relationships, if indeed one of
the parties seeks and obtains other compensation for their sexual activity? If the liberals are right, then the harms that make us wary of
prostitution seem to be severable from the essential nature of prostitutionthe exchange of sexual for nonsexual goods. The exact means
to achieve this severing may be somewhat obscure, but if it could be
accomplished, even just in principle, then this would suggest that the
harms we associate with prostitution are only contingently connected
to it and need not determine how we evaluate prostitution itself.
While some authors have discussed this liberal/radical feminist debate usefully and at length, nothing seems to have ended it or to have
shown the way forward to a resolution.23 The radical feminists themselves
20. Schwarzenbach, p. 125.
21. Ericsson, p. 366.
22. See Nussbaum.
23. Some of the best recent work on this topic has been done by legal theorists,
including Martha Chamallas, Consent, Equality, and the Legal Control of Sexual Conduct, Southern California Law Review 61 (1988): 777861; Margaret Jane Radin, Contested
Commodities (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1997), esp. pp. 12336; and
Baldwin; and by OConnell Davidson, a sociologist. These authors have helpfully analyzed
the difficulties leading to a stalemate in the debates. The author who I think comes closest
to depicting accurately the stakes and difficulties in this debate is Sylvia A. Law, Commercial Sex: Beyond Decriminalization, Southern California Law Review 73 (2000): 523610.
In this article, I will cover some of the same ground as these authors do, but I hope to
give a fuller, more persuasive, and more philosophical defense of the radical feminist
position than these authors have managed. My article also shares a number of the views
and approaches found in the challenging and provocative essay by Balos and Fellows. The
approach taken here departs from theirs in several respects, most notably in holding that
sexual autonomy, while undoubtedly a liberal value, can and should be regarded as a
proper goal of feminist social policy rather than as a problem for such policies. I also
believe that the argument put forward here relies on premises more likely to find broader

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have given little attention to options short of prohibiting prostitution

outright and rarely consider what a reformed prostitution might look
like or what sorts of supports would have to be in place to make such
a thing conceivable.24 In order to advance this debate, I shall now set
out the basis for an answer to this third rejoinder by looking at ways
our society aims to keep sex and commerce separate, giving rise to
protections for a special form of autonomy in sex. In the final section,
I will argue that the radical feminist criticism of prostitution makes most
sense when understood against the background of this more general
protection of sexual autonomy. So understood, I argue that radical feminists can and should deny that normalizing prostitution will suffice to
render it an innocuous institution.
THE RELATIONSHIP OF THE GOODS OF SEX TO
RESTRICTIONS ON OUR PRACTICES
At first face, it may seem paradoxical to suggest that restrictions or
conventions constraining our activities could promote autonomy in
them, since placing external controls on an activity would seem to reduce the individuals control of his or her activity. If we wanted to
provide for sexual autonomy, it would seem that we should, as a society,
forgo attaching any special significance to the sexual use of the body
and instead leave it up to each individual to determine the proper
meaning and uses of sex for him or herself. I want to suggest that this
is a misunderstanding of the function of at least some of the social
controls that regulate our sexual activities. Even though many of us now
believe that sex is potentially valuable (and permissible) under a relatively wide range of circumstancesand, in particular, outside of the
bounds of heterosexual marriagethe potential of sex to yield certain
kinds of goods depends on the fact that, for us, sex has a place in a
social framework, full of myriad restrictions and qualifications.
To illustrate the point, it will help to contrast some of our views
about proper sexual conduct with the norms and regulations governing
ordinary commerce and exchange. It is true of many ordinary human
interactions that they will occur unproblematically on one side or the
other of a transaction in the economic sensefor example, X gives Y
a massage, X teaches Y logic, or X heals Ys illness, in return for which
agreement, if only because the results I defend are considerably more modest in their
ambitions. Nonetheless, their essay is worthy of serious attention and deserves a more
complete response than I can provide here.
24. Responding to reform proposals, Jeffreys is typical of radical feminists when she
writes, If in fact the status of women were to change, then the sex of prostitution would
likely become unthinkable rather than suddenly healthy. . . . If [the johns] had positive
attitudes [toward women], they might not be able to conceive of using women in prostitution at all ( Jeffreys, pp. 22930).

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Y gives X money (or some similar service). Though commercial transactions are governed by a variety of legal and social norms, one of the
principal governing norms is that of contract: one can be bound to
honor ones commitments or forced to compensate the other party
when one fails to do so. These commitments can even be tacit, implied,
or conventional; for example, a seller may be understood to warrant
that her product will have such and so use or effect, or a consumer may
be obligated to pay for a good he uses, without making such commitments explicit in either case. The possibility of making such commitments, and being held to them, is of course indispensable for the
smooth, reliable conduct of virtually all commercial activity.
Now consider how the norms that govern commerce differ from
those that apply in the following scenario. We have all heard tell of (and
perhaps some of us have gone out on) a date where one person, usually
a man, spends lavishly for an evening of food, drink, and entertainment,
and his companion, usually a woman, is thereby expected to accede to
his sexual overtures later in the evening. It is significant that these
expectations may be shared by the people on the date and understood
by them in advance, yet tacitlypossible, perhaps, because they both
inhabit a social circle in which such dates are not unusual. Such dates
continue to occur, we may suppose, because each party gets something
he or she wants from them. This creates the appearance that what we
have here is a transaction, like any other, where accepting the mans
lavish expenditures means that the woman also accepts a subsequent
obligation to let the man have sex with her.
Even if we recognize this pattern of behavior, in which expectations
are often created and fulfilled, we do not think that spending lavishly
on ones date creates anything like a moral or legal obligation for the
date to have sex she does not want. While we may think its a bad thing
to knowingly accept an interested partys lavish attentions while having
no intention of fulfilling his further sexual expectations, we dont hold
that the frustrated party is entitled to enforcement of the bargain against
the wishes of his date. Nor do we hold that hes entitled even to compensation for his efforts or expenditures, except perhaps the wisdom
of experience. If, after his date refuses his sexual overtures, he continues
assertively to press his demands, he will have harassed his date and
perhaps even assaulted her. The fact that sex is a critical variable here
comes out if we notice that we might be more willing to hold someone
responsible for following through on such a bargain if the expected
payback is, say, help with logic or a massage rather than sex.25
25. But not just any sort of expectation other than sex will generate the kind of
obligations Im thinking of here. For instance, lobbyists might treat congressional representatives and salespeople might treat prospective clients to lavish attentions yet generate

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I offer the example of the expensive date in order to suggest that

some of the restrictions that govern our sexual practices serve to prevent
certain kinds of pressures or incentives from being used against a person
to alter her sexual choices. I believe we might best be able to see the
value of the prohibition if we consider, hypothetically, how our lives and
practices would be different without any such constraints in placethat
is, if we were to treat sex as if it were not especially different from other
kinds of activities that occur in commerce. Martha Nussbaum makes
just such a proposal, when she defends the bold claim that we should
see the prostitutes sex work as just another use of the body for purposes
of earning a livingnot especially different from other paid activities,
such as chicken plucking, singing, massaging, or writing philosophical
texts, in ways that matter for purposes of social regulation.26 She argues
that any residual reluctance to normalizing prostitution is based in an
unjustifiable prejudice, one that we should strive to overcome, just as
we have overcome prejudices against allowing women to work on the
stage.27 Although it might be appropriate to regulate prostitution for
purposes of consumer or worker safety, fair trade practices, and so forth,
it is unreasonable, and perhaps unjustifiable, to regulate or prohibit
commercial sexual recreation just because of its sexual nature.
Part of the interest of Nussbaums proposal is that it gives an account
of just what might be behind the persistent, historical stigmatization of
prostitution. Because I think something like her account is both plausible
as well as necessary to justify the liberal position, it is all the more useful
to take Nussbaums claim at face value, rather than in a more cautious,
circumspect way favored by most proposals for normalizing prostitution.
If we take seriously the claim that sex is not especially different from other
ways one can use ones body to make a living, then many more changes
than just normalizing prostitution would be warrantedhence the boldness of her claim.28 I propose to investigate here what it would mean to
treat sex as just another use of the body. That is, I am not concerned at
this point with limited proposals to normalize just prostitution or with
hopes that a carefully constructed regulatory regime could minimize or
localize the effects of sexual commerce. Instead, I mean to investigate
what kind of thing sexual autonomy is and how certain social regulations
no special obligation on the recipients parts. It is, of course, their hope to generate a
psychological feeling of obligation in their recipients, but this is not, we assume, underwritten by an actual moral obligation for the recipients to reciprocate.
26. These are some of the occupations by comparison to which Nussbaum judges
prostitution to be not especially problematic. See Nussbaum, pp. 27885.
27. Ibid., esp. pp. 27780, 28588.
28. In fairness to Nussbaum, I should note that I am suggesting that we accept this
one claim while disregarding the broader aims of her article, which do not, I believe,
require one to endorse any of the scenarios I discuss below.

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Ethics
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foster it. Once we understand this, we will be better placed to inquire

whether some form of legalized prostitution (whether fully normalized
or severely regulated) is really a more justifiable proposal than the prohibition favored by radical feminists.
If we take Nussbaums claim at face value, then I believe that many
readers will be troubled by some of the implications of this laissez-faire
approach to the commercial uses of sex. Treating sex as just another
use of the body in commerce would undermine perhaps three different
aspects of sexual autonomy, illustrated by examples of the following
sorts.
Category A: Incentives to Have Sex
1. Employees now shielded from performing sexual tasks as part
of their conditions of employment may find their job descriptions redefined to include sexual duties. Also, some employees may be required
to provide sexual services to other employees for either hiring or
promotion.
2. Agencies dispensing welfare or unemployment compensations
should be able to expect those who are capable of doing sexual work
to take such work if its available rather than to seek public relief.
3. One may make enforceable contracts to perform or obtain sexual
services. Courts will be required to treat such contracts as they treat
other personal-services contracts and uphold penalties or restrictions
on nonperforming parties.
Category B: Control over Sexual Practices
4. Large, aggressive corporations may legitimately develop sexual
services for consenting adults using whatever business practices are acceptable for other sorts of consumer goods (at least those such as alcohol
or gambling, which are age restricted). In so doing, they may closely
monitor and supervise the workplace sexual practices of those workers
with sexual duties.
5. Workers with sexual duties may be required to adhere to standards of nondiscrimination with respect to their clients or coworkers.
6. The government may be entitled to inspect the health and sexual
practices of prostitutes as this affects their safety and the safety of their
clients. Risky sexual or other safety-affecting practices may be subject
to blanket prohibitions, both while on the job and off.
Category C: Pressures on Sexual Attitudes and Values
7. Those large, aggressive corporations may, as part of their freespeech rights, market their product aggressively with the aim of overcoming prejudices against paying for sex or having sex outside of a
relationship, as well as other marketing objectives.
8. To the extent that special training may help prepare one for
such a career, public schools, vocational schools, and colleges may/
should offer such training. High school career counselors may/should

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advise those who seem differentially suited for this kind of work to
consider it as a career.
My point in offering these scenarios is not to suggest that any of
them is likely to come to pass in the wake of moves to normalize prostitution. Rather, these scenarios are simply exhibits of what it would
mean to take the bold claim seriouslyto treat sex as just another way
to use the body to make a livingand so worth considering for the
insights they might provide.
If these scenarios make us uneasy, I think it is because they illustrate
various ways in which treating sex as just another use of the body for
commercial purposes would lead to the undercutting of sexual autonomy. Undoubtedly, regulating the performance of a given activity (as
the ban on prostitution regulates sex) takes away a certain range of
choices from a person. Nonetheless, such restrictions may provide a sort
of freedom within the activity by preventing it from coming into play
with all of the other forces in life that can come to bear upon it. It is
a brute necessity for most adults in our society that they earn a living
by satisfying the economic demands of others. Rarely does anyone find
a job where one does only the things one wants to do or a job in which
all of ones duties are explicitly agreed to in advance. But as lamentable
as these facts may be, they seem somehow of a different character than
if the equivalent facts were transposed into our sex lives. The principal
problem with treating sex as just another use of the body is that it is
inconsistent with a number of the restrictions that make autonomy possible in sexual conduct.
A prohibition on exchanging sex for certain other sorts of goods
should, if sufficient alternatives exist, provide us with a defense against
various kinds of claims and intrusions that can be made against our
sexual selves. Considering the kinds of pressures found in category A,
if sexual autonomy means anything, it means that sex does not become
a necessary means for a person to avoid violence, brute force, or severe
economic or other hardships. Although this does not constitute the
whole of sexual autonomy, it is surely an essential aspect of it. Were we
seriously to treat sex as just another use of the body in commerce, doing
so would first and most directly undercut sexual autonomy by exposing
almost all workers (and job seekers) to the possibility of being pressured
by employers to have unwanted sex as a condition of employment. On
this hypothesis, there would be no principled justification for the existence of social barriers between sex and commerce, and hence such
barriers should be removed. It is true that the removal of barriers between sex and commerce would vastly increase the number of goods
which could be obtained by means of sexual activity.29 At the same time,
29. For a mundane example, imagine how things might be differentwho would

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Ethics
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however, it would make it legitimate for others to demand, solicit, encourage, expect, and supervise our sexual activity by offering and withholding the ordinary goods within their control. The same necessity
that sometimes compels us to take on unwanted tasks at work might be
used legitimately by others to compel some of us to have sex. This seems
to me to run counter to the basic commonplace against forced sex, just
as it runs against prohibitions on quid pro quo sexual harassment.
We can perhaps make the point more vivid by noting two other
protections against forced sex that, on our hypothesis, should fall by
the wayside. First, to the extent that welfare and unemployment compensation are intended for persons who cannot find suitable employment, if sex work is available and a person is suitable for it (however
that is judged), government should encourage people to take such work
and cut off benefits if such work is refused.30 Second, insofar as persons
are allowed to make enforceable labor contracts, they should be allowed
to make contracts for sexual services, including tacit or implicit agreements, and the courts would have to uphold them. This was the point
gain, and who would loseif instead of taking their prospective clients to strip clubs (as
is standard practice in some industries), companies could utilize their salespeople to
proffer sexual services themselves.
30. The suggestion is meant to be provocative, but its short of absurd. The principal
objection to it is that, while government assistance may be conditional on ones willingness
to take available work, one need only seek suitable work. One can reject a job without
losing unemployment compensation benefits if one does so on bona fide religious grounds,
because it pays less than one is used to earning, because it interferes with family obligations,
because it poses a health risk, or because its a new line of work. Despite such protections,
in the last nine months of 1999, until the press reported it, New York Citys welfare-towork program called Business Link made arrangements with the Psychic Network to
train welfare recipients in Tarot reading and other skills and then to hire them as telephone
psychics at $10$12 per hour. See Nina Bernstein, New York Drops Psychic Training
Program, New York Times ( January 29, 2000); and Michael Daly, Veil of Secrecy Lifted:
Program Training Poor to Be Phone Psychics Is Exposed, New York Daily News (March 19,
2000). (I am indebted to Jacob Levi for alerting me to this factoid.) It is also understood
that, if ones unemployment drags on, the range of jobs one must consider suitable is
expected to grow. Furthermore, former prostitutes might be required to consider such
work suitable if it were available. Finally, welfare reform as we know it has imposed a
number of fairly draconian conditions on eligibility, including work requirements that
seem to pay little attention to the benefit recipients suitability for the jobs they are required
to take. As Sylvia Law has noted, The state enjoys a large freedom to condition receipt
of public assistance upon the sacrifice of otherwise constitutionally protected rights. Perhaps courts would see a policy that conditioned aid on a requirement that a woman engage
in commercial sex as so egregious that the policy would be found to violate constitutional
liberty. But this conclusion is far from clear (Law, p. 606). Hence, the suggestion in the
text may be farfetched at present but is not inconceivable, especially given current trends
in eligibility requirements for public assistance and social insurance. For a more general
discussion of eligibility requirements for unemployment compensation, see Mark A. Rothstein, Charles B. Craver, Elinor P. Schroeder, and Elaine W. Shoben, Employment Law, 2d
ed. (St. Paul, Minn.: West, 1999), pp. 76770, 78688.

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in the expensive date scenario, discussed at the start of this section. As

the lesson of that scenario suggests, the barriers established between
sex and commerce not only function to keep the workplace free of
sexual pressures but also to keep private sexual relations free of the
norms of business, where broken promises and defeated expectations
can bring enforced remedies.
The hypothesis were considering puts sexual autonomy at risk in
a second way by allowing outside parties to exert control over how some
individuals conduct their sexual activities. Many of us hold at least as
an ideal that we should enjoy a right to privacy in the bedroom, where
consensual sexual activities are no one elses concern. And U.S. courts
have acknowledged at least a rudimentary form of that right. Some
prostitutes, too, have asserted demands for the right to exercise control
over their bedrooms. The World Charter for Prostitutes Rights from
1985 demands with respect to working conditions that, it is essential
that prostitutes can provide their services under the conditions that are
absolutely determined by themselves and no one else.31
Workers, however, do not enjoy such rights to privacy in the workplace, and hence this demand by prostitutes runs counter to the supposition that sex work is just another way of working. This problem is
highlighted by the scenarios in category B above. Even supposing that
some people would not be averse to sex work, treating sex work as if it
were no special kind of work entails giving control over how one performs
it to managers, corporate business tactics, and government regulation.
Here it helps to imagine a brothel, though not the Hollywood sort, run
by Dolly Parton or the Mayflower Madame, but rather one owned by the
likes of McDonalds, Nike, or Philip Morris. As in other industries, companies who hire sex laborers would be justified in micromanaging the
activities of their employees, which might include closely monitoring a
prostitutes health; rigorously training the prostitute; imposing strict standards for conduct while at work; insisting on nondiscrimination on the
basis of age, sex, race, religion, or disability; and monitoring client contact
to assure quality and efficiency of service. Civil authorities (e.g., the Chicago departments of health, business affairs, and police) might be required to inspect the health and sexual practices of prostitutes as this
affects their safety and the safety and satisfaction of their clients. The
control of prostitutes activities might also be extended to include off-thejob behavior. For instance, employers might prohibit risky sexual practices
or disclosure of work activities. They might also restrict sexual activity
generally in the form of an exclusive-services contract.
The scenarios described above suggest that sex under such a regime
is unlikely to be autonomous in the sense that applies to consensual
31. Pheterson, p. 40.

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Ethics
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sex in the privacy of ones own bedroom. Such autonomy depends on

having the degree of control over ones sexual activities that prostitutes
have demanded as a right but which has no basis within the norms of
employer-employee relationships. It is only because of the specifically
sexual nature of such work, and our beliefs that sex ought to be autonomously governed, that the assertion of such a right makes any sense
at all.
Considering the scenarios in categories A and B together, its apparent that the degree to which an individual would suffer from the
removal of barriers between sex and commerce would likely depend on
the individuals power and resources within society. If one has sufficient
power and resources at ones command, one can accept desirable or
reject unwanted sexual bargains with little lost and perhaps something
gained. But if a person lacks the power and resources to maintain her
sexual autonomy concurrently with a decent standard of living, she will
find it thrust upon her to decide which she will protect and which she
will give up. For example, if it became acceptable for a manager to
demand (or at least to reward) sexual services from his subordinates,
those lacking the wherewithal to find other work or to refuse his advances while retaining their jobs would be likely to find their situation
made much worse by this institutional change. Those who accept their
new sexual duties may lose a lot of their self-respect, integrity, and depth
of feeling. At the very least, they will have lost the possibility of attaining
a certain kind of good that can be achieved through sex, one that
depends on a connection between sex and intimacy or between sex and
commitment. Those who refuse may lose their jobs and what economic
security they provided. Hence, allowing people to use sexual activity as
just another means of making money may not actually increase autonomy on the whole but could instead spread a persons powerlessness
into her sexual life and undermine her sexual autonomy. She may find
her sexual autonomy tied directly, in a way it need not be, to her economic and political autonomy.
Although the poor and powerless are likely to experience the
greatest losses of sexual autonomy if the institutional restraints that
protect it are removed, the sort of change envisioned above would affect
society broadly: the effects would include changing the way people experience and exercise control over their sexuality. Even those workers
with relatively more power and economic resources may find that sex
becomes less valuable for them as they come to experience their sexual
ends as potentially at odds with their career and economic ends. If sex
is something an employer might legitimately expect of at least some
employees, a person who refuses to accept sexual tasks in her job knows
that someone else might, thus lowering her chances for career advancement and success. Because managers are now prohibited from using

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their superior position to make sexual demands on (or offers to) their
employees, there is rarely a causal link that puts ones sexual ends at
odds with ones career ends.32 Hence one can usually pursue each as
one chooses without compromising the other. Correspondingly, under
a regime that maintains a distinction between work activities and sex,
ones work-related skills constitute a category of merit distinct from ones
sexual qualities. But if employers were allowed to reward or punish
employees for their sexual activities, it would be less clear than it is now
that, when an employee succeeds, she does so based on what we now
think of as her merits.33
There is a third way in which sexual autonomy can be undermined,
somewhat more obscure than the other two but also important to consider. As things stand in this society, we face numerous actors and social
forces that have an impact on our attitudes toward sex, including our
sexual desires and the form in which they are expressed. These may
influence us through advertising, entertainment, education, religion,
peer pressure, and occasionally through more personal and pleasant
contacts. The fact that things external to the self play a role in determining an individuals sexual desires is hardly a matter of concern in
itself. But sexual autonomy involves an aspect of internal regulation of
these desires as well, in accordance with the individuals understanding
of the proper place of sex in a good life. This internal regulation of
sexual desire is a notoriously fraught and unstable activity, and some
people seem to abandon it altogether. Nonetheless, for most of us, there
are times and places where we want to attend to and emphasize the
sexual aspects of our selves and other times and places where we may
not want to be reminded of our sexual selves, desires, possibilities, and
so forth. This division is undoubtedly imposed differently by different
people; paradoxically, however, the possibility of making such a division
depends to some extent on the existence of cooperating external conditions. One way in which such cooperating conditions are secured is
through limits on the ways and places in which external forces are
allowed to manipulate our sexual desires.
You may well ask, What limits? since we seem to be bombarded
by sexual innuendo everywhere, emanating especially from businesses
that advertise to us and entertain us. Things are undeniably murky here.
Nonetheless, advertisers and entertainers now uphold some limits on
their uses of sex, and in these limits, such as they are, we might detect
not just a reflection of prudery but perhaps an acknowledgment that it
32. Of course, this is not true for everyone, as the continuing occurrence of sexual
harassment cases makes clear. Still, it is the intention of sexual harassment laws and policy
to end the threat of such trade-offs.
33. I owe the point of this argument to Candace Vogler.

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Ethics
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is not always desirable to have our desires tweaked. Furthermore, to the

extent that businesses now use sex to sell to us, their goal is at least
typically to sell us something other than sexthe appeal to libido is a
means, not an end in itself. Such marketers may use and arouse our
sexual desires in order to manipulate our other desires (say, the desire
to buy cologne), but its not clear that they have any special incentive
to manipulate or alter the sexual desires themselves (though they may
affect them as a secondary consequence).34
If I am right that we do generally support certain restrictions (legal
or conventional) on how and when external forces are permitted to
influence our sexual desiring, then I think we can see this as consistent
with the idea of sexual autonomy developed so far. Because sexual autonomy depends in part on the internal regulation of our sexual desires,
it is promoted by mechanisms that put certain reasonable limits on the
degree to which external forces can seek to influence our desires. However, as scenario 7 in category C above illustrates, businesses that make
their living off of sex itself have a significant incentive to speak to those
desires directly. The economic well-being of such businesses would depend on their ability to create and keep a share of the market for sexual
services, to which end they would naturally seek to develop and manipulate our desires. Under the hypothesis weve been considering, sex
industries would be justified, as part of their free speech rights, to market
their product aggressively with the aim of overcoming attachments to
monogamy or one or another form of sexual practice. They might also
employ marketing strategies aimed at developing brand loyalty, establishing tie-ins to other consumer/entertainment goods, and creating
niche markets of underserved sexual desires. If these scenarios do raise
34. The marketing of pornography, of course, seems to provide a counterexample to
this view, since the demand for pornography is significantly influenced by the quantity
and kinds of sexual desires people have. There is, however, an ongoing debate over what
limits are appropriate for the manufacture and sale of pornography. We can see both
sides in this debate as making arguments about the ways in which our sexual desires should
be subject to influence from external sources. This is obviously true in the case of those
who wish to ban or restrict pornography, who argue that it harms and deforms such
desires. But we should note that many of pornographys defenders respond in the same
terms when they argue that pornography plays a valuable role in making us aware of the
wide variety of forms in which desire can occur. They argue that it liberates desires, making
them more genuine and imaginative. Hence we can see, even among defenders of pornography, that one main line of defense depends on a view of what kinds of external
influences are valuable and/or harmful to our sexual autonomy. Yet these defenders need
not defend a blanket right of pornography producers to market it everywhere, to everyone,
all the time; they may support a ban on all sexual depictions of children as well as restrictions to prevent children from accessing pornography. In this vein, it is worth noting
that, at least prior to the advent of the Internet, you couldnt acquire pornography just
anywhere, which suggests that it has been regulated by convention if not by law. It remains
to be seen whether some form of these conventions will take hold in cyberspace.

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some concerns about whether we want our sexual desires to be pressured

in these ways, then it suggests that these pressures run counter to what
we think of as good or healthy influences on our sexual desires.
There is also a great deal of dispute over what influences should
be allowed to reach children regarding their sexual desires, morals, and
practices. As with a number of other goods (e.g., alcohol, tobacco, and
drugs), some degree of paternalism is clearly justified. And schools
clearly dont attempt to train students for every possible, legitimate
career. However, schools often take a role in preparing students for
relationships or married life, for sexual activity, as well as for postgraduation careers. On our hypothesis, it would seem reasonable that they
should also attempt to make students aware of legal career opportunities
in sex work and provide training as necessary, as suggested in scenario
8. If we would object to schools playing this kind of role in career
development, and object because of the sexual aspects of such careers,
then such objections suggest that we do not believe sex is just another
way of working or that training people to view it as such is in their best
interests.35
Even if one believes that our sexual mores ought to be revised, or
that the above scenarios are not as problematic as I suggest, my point
in this discussion has been to show that not all of the restrictions we
might impose on sexual activity are simply vestiges of some now-abandoned, Victorian view of sex. Rather, the institutional restrictions on
what sex can be used for serve to establish a special kind of autonomy
in matters of sex and give a sense to the mundane view that sex is a
kind of good distinct from those that are typically involved in com35. Because high school students are in the process of developing into autonomous
persons but are generally understood not to have arrived there yet, it is unclear to me
whether this objection shows the place of sexual autonomy as clearly as the previous ones
do. It might be useful to distinguish here between the practical and ideological functions
of education in promoting autonomy and their relationship to career choice. If people
are prevented from taking up careers in sex work due to a lack of appropriate education
(vocational training, counseling, etc.), then of course making such education available
could also increase their autonomy. But it seems unlikely that the absence of vocational
training is really a hindrance to making sex work a careerit is in part the ease with
which it can be taken up that accounts for our disdain of it. So there would not seem to
be much practical use for educating students about sex work. There might, however, be
an ideological point to such training, aimed at reversing a prejudice, as, for instance, we
desire schools to show women that they can be doctors and men that they can be nurses.
If the reasons people are squeamish about sex work are based in prejudice, then fighting
such prejudice would seem an appropriate role for schools to take up in training students
for future work. Hence, with these caveats, I offer the scenario of high school vocational
training as another case that is at least potentially consistent with the general pattern
noted in the other scenarios.

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mercial transactions.36 If sexual activity needs to be couched in a set of

institutional protections different from those that apply to work activities
in general (such as OSHA regulations, nondiscrimination standards,
fair labor laws, etc.), then we appear to share a desire for autonomy in
our sexual activity that justifies these protections.
SEXUAL AUTONOMY AS A RADICAL FEMINIST VALUE
The point of the above discussion is to show that the legal and social
discouragement of prostitution is just one of a large variety of ways in
which our sexual activities are intentionally regulated or constrained by
our communities; it is also one of the principal methods by which a
separation is established between sexual activity and commercial activity.
Hence, it helps to make possible a special kind of autonomy for agents
with respect to their sexual activity. So far, I have suggested that we do
indeed value sexual autonomy, but I have not tried to give a defense
or explanation of this value. For some, its value may be obvious, yet
surely some would think it a false or pernicious value. And though the
arguments above suggest that we desire some separation of sexual activity
from commerce in general, these arguments do not specifically speak
to whether the prohibition on prostitution is merited. I want now to
return to the arguments of liberals and radical feminists for and against
normalizing prostitution, respectively, and to show how the above reflections on sexual autonomy help strengthen the latter sides case
against normalization.
Keeping in mind the many points of agreement between liberals
and radical feminists, we can begin to make sense of the prohibition
of prostitution, as well as proposals to normalize and reform it, by separating out two different though related kinds of problems that, in
combination, motivate their opposing responses to prostitution. The
first kind, which Ill call the narrower set, consists in the specific acts
of customers and pimps who harm, abuse, degrade, and exploit the
prostitutes they employ. It also includes those harms and disadvantages
that arise from state efforts to suppress prostitution, for example, the
inability of prostitutes to organize collectively. These sorts of problems
are ones that legal remedies (including perhaps altering or repealing
some laws) are most likely to affect directly. The broader set of problems
consists of the more general social facts that contribute to making pros36. Please note that I am not claiming, nor do I think its true, that current attitudes
toward sex have an unproblematic history or that they need be considered beyond criticism. Instead, I claim that even if our sexual views are problematic for historical or other
reasons, it would require significant revision in the ways we think about sex and its relationship to personality before removing the barriers between commerce and sexual
activity will seem, on the whole, ethically unproblematic.

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titution a problematic institution. These facts include a number of things

related one way or another to its sexual nature, for example, its gendermarked characteristics, the social stigma that attaches to both prostitutes
and johns, and the feeling many prostitutes have of being demeaned
and dirty. These social facts also include the circumstances that make
(some) women and (a few) men particularly vulnerable to the worst
aspects of prostitution without much say in the matter. Such circumstances include womens inferior economic status and specifically the
lack of a range of better employment options. They also include the
existence of social conditions that seem to undermine the ability of
some peoplemostly womento resist or avoid the sorts of harms and
abuses that characterize many prostitutes lives. Finally, they include the
fact that the plights of prostitutes, and women more generally, are rarely
seen as injustices demanding social remedies. It should be clear that
the two sets of problems are related: the need to consider special legal
treatment for prostitution derives, it seems, from the more general social
difficulties faced by (would-be) prostitutes. Ill consider the narrower
and broader sets of problems in turn.
If we compare prohibition to normalization with respect to the
narrower set of harms, it is clear that the current legal regime makes
it difficult for many prostitutes to avoid the harms meted out to them
by clients, pimps, psychopaths, and even many police officers. It also
puts many prostitutes at a bargaining disadvantage in negotiating
prices.37 The normalization of prostitution would surely go some ways
toward protecting prostitutes from such misconduct and exploitation
by ending the prostitutes outlaw status.38 What is less often noted is
37. Note, however, that prostitutes may at present reap some benefits from an artificial
scarcity created by the prohibition of prostitution. If the prohibition is ended, the demand
for sexual services might increase, but the supply of prostitutes might increase even more,
resulting in lowered prices and leaving those who currently engage in prostitution worse
off in absolute terms.
38. The experience of some European countries is of interest here since several have
moved further toward the legal normalization of prostitution than has the United States
while at the same time providing, on the whole, greater equality for women than exists here.
That said, the European experience might not be especially helpful in settling debates over
normalization in general. For one thing, although some countries have undone some of the
most onerous strictures on prostitution, none have really gone so far as to treat it just like
any other form of work. Among the legal strictures, prostitutes are typically confined to
certain geographic areas (red-light districts), typically only small-scale businesses are allowed
to proffer sexual services, and various ancillary regulations are often used to check the
activities of prostitutes. Beyond the law, social stigma still attaches to being or hiring a
prostitute even where prostitution is legal. For an overview of the situation in a number of
European countries (among others), see the contributions in Nanette J. Davis, ed., Prostitution:
An International Handbook on Trends, Problems, and Policies (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood, 1993).
The most promising comparison case may be provided by the Netherlands, which has perhaps
the most tolerance for and recent experience with prostitution in Europe. As in other

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Ethics
July 2002
that we could achieve significant progress in this direction without accepting the normalization of prostitution. As radical feminists have
urged, society could undertake legal reform to ameliorate these problems by, for instance, removing the legal sanctions that now threaten
prostitutes and instead increasing sanctions and enforcement against
prostitutes customers and exploitative pimps and procurers. We might
also, as has occasionally been proposed, increase the ability of prostitutes
to sue for damages those who harm or abuse them.39 Finally, we might
revise laws covering rape and other sex crimes to ensure that they protect
prostitutes the same as anyone else and insist that police and prosecutors
treat prostitutes with respect and concern. In other words, we could
improve the lives of prostitutes by redirecting the onus of our legal
system away from those who are already disadvantaged and placing it
countries, there is a great diversity in the types of prostitution practiced in the Netherlands,
and the quality of life for prostitutes shows similar variance. According to the 1994 study of
prostitution in the Netherlands by Vanwesenbeeck, the best off (roughly a fourth of the total
number of prostitutes) seem to enjoy a high standard of living, better than the average for
women in the Netherlands; the middle 50 percent are somewhat less well-off than their
nonprostitute peers; and those in the bottom 25 percent are very badly off. Their suffering
was even greater than the average of the control group of heavily traumatized non-prostitute
women (Vanwesenbeeck, p. 147). Major determinants of a prostitutes quality of life were
childhood experiences (particularly abuse), economic situation, working conditions, and her
interactions with clientsin particular, whether the prostitute felt helpless or powerless
relative to her clients. Those who were at the bottom of the prostitution hierarchy were
thought to have the most troublesome and recalcitrant customers (ibid., p. 152), partially
explaining why they seem to fare so much worse than those at the top of the hierarchy.
Adding to the complexity of this picture is the fact that, according to estimates, most of the
women working in prostitution in the Netherlands are foreigners, and as many as 50 percent
of the prostitutes are not European Union nationals and do not have valid work permits.
Many of them, probably most, come from poorer parts of the world, and at least some
sizeable portion of them are very likely to be working in prostitution nonvoluntarily. See
Judith Kilvington, Sophie Day, and Helen Ward, Prostitution Policy in Europe: A Time of
Change? Feminist Review 67 (2001): 7893; and Donna M. Hughes, Laura Joy Sporcic, Nadine
Z. Mendelsohn, and Vanessa Chirgwin, The Factbook on Global Sexual Exploitation, published
on-line by the Coalition against Trafficking in Women at http://www.catwinternational.org/
factbook.htm (1999). These facts suggest that the difficulties of prostitution may be hard to
remedy through normalization. Furthermore, if the government cracks down on those immigrant prostitutes who are working in the Netherlands illegally, that by itself might serve
to undo the benefits of normalization to those women by returning them to outlaw status
and driving their activities back underground. It is perhaps also of interest that, at roughly
the same time that the Netherlands, Denmark, and Germany have moved toward legal
normalization, Sweden has decided to take an approach much more like that recommended
by the radical feminists: it has recently increased the penalties and enforcement against the
customers and employers of prostitutes while leaving prostitutes themselves more or less free
from sanctions. See again Kilvington et al.
39. On the merits of this approach, see Balos and Fellows.

Anderson
773
on those whose misconduct makes prostitution dangerous, degrading,

and exploitative.40
Although this sort of legal reform has some academic appeal, it is
admittedly unrealistic. That is, as unlikely as we are to normalize prostitution anytime soon, we are surely less likely still to enact laws that
punish only the (male) customers and pimps who use or abuse prostitutes while protecting prostitutes themselves. One might suppose that
its the asymmetry of this proposal that explains why it is so unlikely,
but one should keep in mind that the current legal regime is almost
equally asymmetrical, except that it punishes and constrains prostitutes
while it effectively protects from prosecution those who rape or abuse
them and punishes only rarely and mildly those who employ them. At
any rate, our society could make prostitution safer and less exploitative
by normalizing it, but to some extent, this goal can be achieved by
redirecting the burden of the laws toward customers and pimps and by
holding them responsible for the damages they inflict.
Turning now to the broader set of problems, it would seem that
neither strategy can do much to rectify the background conditions that
make prostitution, however bad it may be, still the best feasible option
for some people, especially women. Normalizing prostitution, however,
would seem to give women, especially, one option they do not now
possess, while continued prohibition leaves them no better off. Let us
suppose that with normalized prostitution, almost all women would have
at least one job open to them that paid a decent wage or better. If so,
making this option widely available might seem a significant improvement for many women.
Whether or not this supposition is defensible, the conclusion fails,
I think, to understand the nature of the broader problems of which
prostitution is a part. If indeed the harms suffered by women in prostitution derive largely from the underlying inequality and hardship they
face, then the proposal to normalize prostitution is a mismatched solution. The fact that one additional economic optionnamely, prostitutionmight be offered to women is trivial in comparison to the many
other opportunities that are denied and hardships that are imposed.
Looking at the social facts underlying prostitution, we should ask why
anyone should have to work as a prostitute just to be able to earn what
40. I do not mean to suggest, however, that simply shifting the burdens of prohibition
from prostitute to customer, even if feasible, is without drawbacks. Looking at some places
that have done more to prosecute customers, the evidence shows that targeting customers
also serves to drive prostitution out of the public eye and into more obscure, isolated, and
often more dangerous locations. For descriptions of some European results of such a policy,
see Kilvington et al. (for Sweden); and Rosie Campbell and Merl Storr, Challenging the
Kerb Crawler Rehabilitation Programme, Feminist Review 67 (2001): 94108 (for the United
Kingdom).

774
Ethics
July 2002
an ordinary man would make doing an ordinary job. Even if normalization would improve the economic situation of prostitutes, as were
assuming it would, it seems highly unlikely to alter the more general
problem of womens social and economic inferiority. Having one more
economic opportunity than is now present will hardly solve the more
general deprivations and disparities that help generate prostitutions
more striking harms.
We might still ask, however, whether normalization could help to
render the activity less problematic or at least whether it could avoid
exacerbating those problems. In particular, we might hope that normalization would render the sexual aspects less traumatizing or stigmatizing, in part by making prostitution more like other jobs, in part
by changing common attitudes toward prostitution. But such hopes are
misplaced. Even if normalizing prostitution results in improved economic opportunity for would-be prostitutes, the improvement comes at
the expense of their sexual autonomy, something that one gets to retain
in most other kinds of work. Normalization would also undermine the
ability to see this loss of sexual autonomy as a matter of injustice rather
than as a matter of the prostitutes career choice. To the extent that
sexual autonomy is important to us, making a persons economic viability conditional on giving up that autonomy is not a promising strategy
for fixing the underlying circumstances.
To make this case, consider the objection that I am making too
much of sexual autonomysomething that is, at any rate, a contestable
value. Now it is certainly possible to imagine our society undergoing
changes through which sex might become a relatively mundane activity,
perhaps as inconsequential (under what would have to be the ordinary
circumstances) as going out for dinner or acting on a solicitation to
buy a newspaper. Were sex to become that ordinary, there would be no
sense in proposing a special sort of autonomy with respect to it. At the
same time, it would likely cease to play such a large role in the oppression
of women and sexual minorities, and conceivably such oppression would
die away, since its main organizing principle would have lost its punch.
While this possibility is perhaps a consummation devoutly to be
wished, it is not how things are now.41 Both in history and in the present,
a persons sexuality almost always figures prominently as an aspect of
41. The hope that someday the pressure might be taken off of sex is one of the most
appealing goals of some recent prominent work in queer theory. See, e.g., Michael Warner,
The Trouble with Normal (New York: Free Press, 1999). The suggestion is that if we could learn
to transform sex into a not-terribly-portentous recreational activity, we might live better,
happier lives in greater harmony with one another. Of course, there are tremendous difficulties in figuring out how to make the transition to this world without leaving large numbers
of people vulnerable to horrible mistakes and exploitation. But if we could indeed let some
of the air out of sex, it seems to me that this would be a very good thing by feminist standards.

Anderson
775
his or her self-conception, status in society, and economic and social

prospects. Being thought beautiful or ugly, being experienced or inexperienced, being raped or impregnated, being sexually apathetic or
adventurousall of these factors can have significant impacts on how
ones life goes, how one is treated by others, and how one thinks of
oneself.42 One cannot perhaps have total control over any of these factors, but there are varying degrees of control a person can exercise over
his or her sexual activities and characteristics, and nearly everyone wants
more control rather than less. It is because sex plays such a pivotal role
in the lives of most adults, starting in their formative years, that it creates
its own special subject as well as a realm within which one can be more
or less autonomous.43
Looking at the lives of prostitutes in particular, especially the
women at the poorer end of the economic spectrum, it is clear that
42. One indication of the separateness of this domain is that it cannot be reduced to
or deduced from other important sources of autonomy. Being secure in ones possession of
economic necessities, having a good education, and having a well-functioning, healthy body
are all important for autonomy, but none of these provide much of a guarantee that one
possesses sexual autonomy (one might, for instance, be pinned by terror into an abusive
relationship, the victim of rape, or subject to pervasive sexual harassment). Moreover, it is
at least conceptually possible that a person could lead a sexually autonomous life even if her
economic, educational, and bodily autonomy are left insecure. (As a matter of practical
reality, however, these other forms of self-determination are frequently conducive to maintaining ones sexual autonomy.)
43. Here is as good a place as any to note a different sort of objection that can be raised
against prostitution and to ask whether it too might help the radical feminists case. The
suggestion is that selling sex is objectionable because it commodifies something that is not
appropriately treated as a commodity. The central text for this objection is Radins Contested
Commodities, but similar complaints are raised by others. While I dont wish to rebut these
arguments here, Im not especially moved by them. It is thus perhaps useful to explain why
the arguments Im interested in making are different from an objection to the commodification of sex. In making my case, I have avoided trying to justify the special status that sex
has for us, which is, I believe, contingent on many other facts about our form of social life.
The point of my objection is that prostitution in our society helps institutionalize unequal
access to sex having such special status, as well as unequal sexual autonomyparticularly
inequality between men and women, and rich and poor. These inequalities are harmful to
the weaker groups and help to perpetuate and reinforce broader inequalities between these
people. But as I have just noted, the meaning and significance of sex are subject to change.
Were sex to acquire a very different status for us, the problems associated with prostitution
could well dissipate. By contrast, the objection to the commodification of sex depends on a
view about the special characteristics of sex that distinguish it from ordinary commodities
and a worry that if sex is mixed in commerce, it could lose its special characteristics. Whether
or not the other difficulties with this argument can be solved, its essentialism about good
and bad kinds of sex seems to me unnecessarily contentious. Furthermore, such reliance on
essentialist views ought to be methodologically unappealing to radical feminists, whether or
not they agree with its results. So while Radin-style arguments might reach conclusions similar
to mine, the premises seem to me more contestable and less hospitable to other feminist
concerns. (I am indebted to Leslie Francis for pressing me on this point.)

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Ethics
July 2002
they do not exercise sexual autonomy in their sex work. As a result,

they are subject to harms that society ordinarily makes great efforts to
protect its members from. Many go into prostitution either because of
prior brutalization or sexual abuse or because of homelessness, substance addiction, or financial emergency.44 While some find the work
easy and unobjectionable, even sometimes pleasant, many women find
the work degrading or disgusting, their customers vile, and their sense
of self-worth to be very low. Many would likely agree with Dworkins
assessment of prostitution in the passage quoted above, which sees prostitution as a dirty job where the dirt is intrinsically linked to a specific
sort of male desire to use a womans body. The fact that they have, in
some sense, chosen or allowed others to use their bodies in these ways
does not, it seems, mitigate the damage they suffer as a result. These
women have traded their sexual autonomy for whatever economic benefit they can get for it: they do not exercise it by using sex as a means
of survival.45
When one reads Dworkins description of prostitution, or the accounts of other former prostitutes looking back in horror, one need
not suppose that these claims describe the life of every prostituteeven
if the authors say soin order to find in them compelling reasons to
intervene against prostitution. Dworkins depiction of the effect of sex
on the prostitutes body is gripping because we do not think the visceral
aspects of sexual commerce are just ordinary aspects of doing a job you
dont much like. The fact that the harms Dworkin describes are bodily
is not incidental; part of the point is that prostitution affects the body
directly and integrally, and it stays with the prostitute long after her
44. For documentation, see citations provided in n. 12.
45. Some prostitutes rights advocates have objected that the prohibition of prostitution
diminishes prostitutes sexual autonomy by preventing them from using their bodies as they
see fit. Whether or not this is so, the reader should note that nothing I have said so far
would provide a rationale for placing restrictions on adult consensual sexual conduct per
se when one uses sex for the sake of goods such as pleasure, intimacy, distraction, procreation,
or even revenge or notoriety. Now no doubt some people might be attracted to work in
prostitution for the sake of the sexual goods they can obtain or provide to others. In such
casesand I think only in such casesa plausible argument can be made that the prohibition
of prostitution decreases to some extent some peoples sexual autonomy. Nonetheless, among
the many arguments against prohibiting prostitution, we should not be too concerned that
it prevents would-be prostitutes from achieving the sexual frequency, variety, and skilled
expertise they would otherwise have. Were a person, man or woman, to set out to have a
prostitutes sex life without its financial rewards, such action would go well beyond promiscuity, becoming nearly unintelligible. Working as a prostitute is not in general used as a
means to these ends in the same way as, say, working as a philosophy teacher is used as a
means to further ones philosophical activitiessex just isnt suited for that sort of role in
most peoples lives. Hence, ruling out one particular way sex can be used is a much smaller
intrusion on autonomy than are circumstances where people have little choice other than
to engage in sexual activity to earn a decent living.

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777
clients are gone and she has quit the trade. Of course, if we thought
that sex was nothing out of the ordinary, then Dworkins description of
prostitution would lose much of its force, becoming something more
like the complaint of a laborer who is bored, dirty, sore, and even a bit
bloodied at the end of a day. Insofar as we see a special urgency in
Dworkins complaint, we have a reason to hold that sex warrants its own
form of autonomy.
Although prohibiting prostitution does not by itself suffice to guarantee or restore sexual autonomy to those who now lack it, the prohibition can play a role in rejecting arrangements that result in its loss.
Prohibition not only denies individuals the choice to sell sex for money,
it also signals that no one should be expected to make choices about
sex just to escape economic hardship. Given the current prohibitions
on prostitution, it is within the reach of our present moral understanding to object to such trade-offs on the grounds that a person should be
entitled to both a decent standard of living and the freedom to choose
his or her sexual activities and partners by their special merits, whatever
those may be. We are presently able to see such trade-offs as a problem
different in kind from those involved in ordinary economic decision
making. The prohibition on prostitution is, as much as anything, a
restriction on what kinds of pressures or circumstances society will permit to bear on its members sexual choices. It thus helps support the
assertion of a right to sexual autonomysomething that does not depend on a persons command of economic or political resourcesand
thereby helps us to see that a prostitutes loss of sexual autonomy is a
matter of social injustice.46
By contrast, normalizing prostitution would tend to undercut claims
that sexual autonomy is a right and instead would make a prostitutes
loss of sexual autonomy appear to be a matter of her choice of careerin
part, a matter of just how much she values her sexual autonomy. But so
long as social institutions protect most of us by preventing the sexualization of most kinds of jobs, prostitution would not be just any career.
Those who choose to sell their sexual services will work in a very distinctive type of job. It will be a fact about people so employed that they
exercise a liberty which is not open to most of us and that they contravene a standard of behavior which most of us uphold. They will also
be subject to pressures and restrictions on their activities that cannot
46. Of course, recognizing this, our society ought to be moved to create other economic
opportunities for women and others when it turns out that prostitution is the best option
available to them. Perhaps it is true that a society unwilling to take this further step should
not prohibit prostitution. My point is simply that if prostitution is normalized, it becomes
very difficult to see any need to act to create additional economic opportunitiesthat is,
any more than we see such a need when workers in other fields face a constrained choice
of jobs.

778
Ethics
July 2002
be placed on the rest of us. To the extent that, for instance, barriers
against workplace sexual harassment help secure sexual autonomy for
workers, this kind of protection simply wont extend to those whose
economic situation makes prostitution their only viable economic option. Even if the legal prohibition on prostitution is ended, choosing
to engage in that occupation will set one apart from other workers on
these grounds alone, if on no others. Hence, leaving some people out
of the protections most of us enjoy will serve to differentiate them from
the rest of us and do so in a way that can reinforce, even seemingly
justify, the harms they suffer.
An additional source of evidence for this last claim can be found
by looking more broadly at how sexual activity and characteristics frequently serve as markers for a number of different sorts of hierarchical
relations, including but not limited to those involving gender. For instance, one of the ways that members of oppressed classes and races
can be stereotyped is according to their (presumed) sexual proclivities
or activities, on the basis of which law or social norms can be used to
impose costs or withhold benefits in ways that reinforce or sustain their
oppression. To cite just two examples: in order to project an image of
propriety, middle-class women and men in early nineteenth-century England were required to adhere to sexual double standards regarding
proper conduct for men and women in order to distinguish themselves
from the lower economic classes, who supposedly lacked such morals.47
Closer to home, the supposed laxity of sexual ethics among AfricanAmericans has provided both a stereotype and a justification for withdrawing welfare and other social benefits from impoverished AfricanAmerican communities in the last twenty years.48 Thus sexual practices
and qualities manifest a tendency to serve as defining characteristics,
or codings, not just of genders but also of other kinds of hierarchically
defined groups. It is hard to say whether this sort of hierarchical coding
of sexual activity can be avoided. But so long as sex and sexuality are
invested with a high degree of significance, we will need to be wary that
the roles of client and seller in prostitution may support and reinforce
various forms of social oppression. Even if gender domination were
47. For instance, according to historian Jeffrey Weeks, Sexual choice was hemmed in
by simultaneous emphases on property, the survival (and even accentuation) of a differentiated standard of morality, and the growth of the ideology of respectability, with all its class
connotations (Sex, Politics and Society, 2d ed. [New York: Longman, 1989], pp. 2627).
48. For one discussion of this phenomenon, see Patricia Hill Collins, Black Feminist
Thought, 2d ed. (New York: Routledge, 2000), chap. 4.

Anderson
779
miraculously to end, the kinds of roles established in prostitution may

serve to support other equally unjust forms of social hierarchy.49
In the absence of a prohibition on prostitution, working in prostitution may come to be seen as just a career choice, appropriate for
people who prefer other goods to sexual autonomy. But if this can be
seen as a career choice, why not also suppose prostitutes choose to be
treated in the way that Dworkin describes or at least suppose they are
adequately compensated for such harms? After all, theyre not like us;
they do things we wouldnt dream of doing. If this last distinction reflects
49. In this spirit, we might consider whether the claims made in this article are as
relevant to the situation of male prostitutes as they are to female prostitutes. There is no
short and satisfactory answer to this question, but a list of differences and similarities between
male and female prostitution might provide some insights. On the one hand, it is clear that
male prostitution does not reinforce or reproduce so insidious an image of male sexuality
in general as female prostitution seems to generate. This can perhaps be explained by several
factors. For one thing, the gay-male subcultures in which many of these prostitutes operate
are perhaps more tolerant and affirming of prostitution in general, so they may escape, at
least locally, much of the stigma that attaches to women prostitutes. Also, the social significance of male prostitution is very different from that of female prostitution. Note, for instance,
that there is no common epithet for men comparable in meaning or significance to that of
whore hurled at a woman. Moreover, the harms associated with female prostitution (before,
during, and after) are apparently less prevalent among male prostitutes. Finally, male prostitution has a considerably lower profile in our society than does female prostitution. To the
extent that it has much visibility outside of gay-male subcultures, it is mainly because of
transvestite prostitutes who work in the guise of women. (It is conceivable, however, that gaymale prostitution does contribute to a picture of what gay-male sexuality is like.) See Garrett
Prestage, Male and Transsexual Prostitution, in Sex Work and Sex Workers in Australia, ed.
Roberta Perkins, Rachell Sharp, Garrett Prestage, and Frances Lovejoy (Sydney: University
of New South Wales Press, 1994), pp. 17490. For a subjective argument along these lines,
see Julian Marlowe, Its Different for Boys, in Nagle, pp. 14144. On the other hand, even
if male prostitution does not help to reproduce pernicious gender hierarchies, it still frequently reflects other sorts of hierarchy. Of those who become male prostitutes, a disproportionate number bear the marks of poverty, abuse, and rejection. In the trade, many male
prostitutes suffer harms similar to those suffered by women, especially if they are younger
and/or less secure. And one striking manifestation of hierarchy in prostitution has been the
development, within sex tourism, of a female demand from the developed world for male
prostitutes in poorer regions, such as the Caribbean. This last suggests that the gendered
nature of prostitution is less fixed than are the relations of dominance/subordination between client and provider. For a discussion of this last point, see OConnell Davidson, pp.
18083; and Kamala Kempadoo, Freelancers, Temporary Wives, and Beach Boys: Researching Sex Work in the Caribbean, Feminist Review 67 (2001): 3962. So, although there is
within male prostitution a degree of variation similar to that within female prostitution, the
above facts suggest that the difference between male and female prostitution may not be as
great as my focus on female prostitution might suggest. Such differences as there are, however,
seem to derive from the superior social position men, including male homosexuals, enjoy
relative to women and from the different role that sex plays in a part of gay-male society.
Hence, it seems to me that adding the evidence from male prostitution to my account enriches
and ramifies the main argument of this article but does not significantly challenge its principal
points. I thank Marcia Baron for pressing me to clarify this subject.

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Ethics
July 2002
a mistake or a prejudice, its connected to a thought many of us would

nonetheless be very reluctant to give up: that our sexual choices are
deeply important to us, and thus the ability to make them carefully, and
autonomously, is something we aim to protect. Although normalizing
prostitution might work to the economic advantage of prostitutes, its
not clear that it would or should change our views of the significance
of sex or the importance of maintaining autonomy with respect to sexual
uses of ones body. It would, however, greatly obscure the extent to
which becoming a sex worker means, for many people, trading off control over their sexual choices for some measure of economic security.
Normalizing prostitution will, for this group at least, amount to surrendering sexual autonomy as a distinctive good to which they should be
entitled as a matter of basic social justice.
The arguments offered here thus set out what I think is the most
compelling version of the institutional critique of prostitution. While
most of us are fortunate to fall within a variety of social strictures that
protect our sexual autonomy from various external forces, prostituteseven under a normalized prostitutionmanifestly lack one of
the key protections. They thus tend to be marked as a distinctive group,
targeted for certain forms of abuse and stigma, and harmed in ways that
materially and symbolically contribute to reproducing the social disparities that make some people, especially women, vulnerable from the
beginning. These arguments therefore answer the liberal challenge
noted above by showing why commerce in sexual activity is especially
problematic for social justice and why normalizing and reforming prostitution would fail to address one of the central grounds for the radical
feminists complaint. They also show, I think, why its important for
feminists and others concerned with justice to pay explicit attention to
this special sort of autonomy when evaluating and reforming our societys institutions and practices.


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2. In contrast to most of Western Europe, prostitution is currently illegal everywhere

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faced by women in prostitution and have tried to show that prostitution

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Prostitution and Sexual Autonomy

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exploitation are excluded, there remains a segment of the sex trade in

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Prostitution and Sexual Autonomy

survivor of prostitution. She paints a harrowing picture of prostitution

9. Dworkin, pp. 14445.

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Prostitution and Sexual Autonomy

while law enforcement agencies treat them as outlawsliterally, people

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THE LIBERAL RESPONSE: REFORM THROUGH

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Prostitution and Sexual Autonomy

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Prostitution and Sexual Autonomy

have given little attention to options short of prohibiting prostitution

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Prostitution and Sexual Autonomy

I offer the example of the expensive date in order to suggest that

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foster it. Once we understand this, we will be better placed to inquire

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Prostitution and Sexual Autonomy

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Prostitution and Sexual Autonomy

in the expensive date scenario, discussed at the start of this section. As

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sex in the privacy of ones own bedroom. Such autonomy depends on

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Prostitution and Sexual Autonomy

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is not always desirable to have our desires tweaked. Furthermore, to the

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Prostitution and Sexual Autonomy

some concerns about whether we want our sexual desires to be pressured

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mercial transactions.36 If sexual activity needs to be couched in a set of

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Prostitution and Sexual Autonomy

titution a problematic institution. These facts include a number of things

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Prostitution and Sexual Autonomy

on those whose misconduct makes prostitution dangerous, degrading,

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Prostitution and Sexual Autonomy

his or her self-conception, status in society, and economic and social